This is awesome Jon, thanks for all the details. Made updating the theme to accommodate those new features very easy.

I just tried the latest version of the theme and it does not seem to obey show_tab_close_buttons setting, ie still displays close buttons on tabs no matter what my setting is. Could you fix that please?

Is there a setting to be able to control the text background colour and text colour of the text that renders in the input fields of the UI, like the Find / Replace fields and quickpanels? It is currently drawn from the code highlighting scheme.

Actually, thinking about this some more, maybe the solution is in the question.

If the text input fields are built to render using colour scheme rules, allowing a theme configuration to specify and use a separate / custom colour scheme file (one that the theme developer could design and include in the theme bundle), could perhaps be a way to achieve the desired result without having to change the input file text rendering implementation.

btw, it'll be a bit of time before I can code up extra theming support - adding support for the new features in OS X Lion is taking priority for the moment.

buymeasoda:

Is there are setting to configure text background colour to be transparent in places like the tab labels, quickpanels text and code completion suggest text? For situations where UI text sits on top of shaded graphics, having the background colour causes it to show up. The sidebar labels look to be render without having to have the background colour showing.

There are a few different types of label controls used, and the ones used in these locations only work properly on opaque backgrounds. I'd like to remove this restriction at some point, but there's a considerable amount of work to do so while keeping sub-pixel antialiasing working correctly.

buymeasoda:

Is there a setting to be able to control the text background colour and text colour of the text that renders in the input fields of the UI, like the Find / Replace fields and quickpanels? It is currently drawn from the code highlighting scheme.

You can do this via adding a Widget.sublime-settings in your theme package, and overriding the colour scheme in there. Widget.sublime-settings accepts the same keys as Base File.sublime-settings, will override the settings in Base File.sublime-settings, and only applies to widgets. Take a look at the one in the Default package - it's used to turn off things like line numbers and the line highlight, which don't make sense for widgets to have.

@jps: talking of theming, can you add a way of customizing bracket highlight look & feel? I would like to make bolder bracket and with a slight bg change (the underline is hard to notice sometimes and i have to stay like this: )Thanks!

I just tried the latest version of the theme and it does not seem to obey show_tab_close_buttons setting, ie still displays close buttons on tabs no matter what my setting is. Could you fix that please?

When you say "still displays close buttons", do you mean:

1) They are always visible on the tab, at all times, regardless of the setting2) They are not visible, then when you hover over the tab, they become visible

Number 2 is what I have implemented at this time for the theme, but if I'm following along correctly with the most recent changes Jon has made to the default theme, the behaviour looks to have changed in the most recent dev build to be:

3) Never show the close button on tabs, even when hovering, unless "show_tab_close_buttons" is true, in which case show it all the time.

Is 2 what you are experiencing?

And at this time, is 3 the current, preferred / canonical behaviour for the close button?

Implementing show-close-button-on-hover via the theme leads to artifacts, as it can cause the label to move around (as showing the close button on the tab makes the contents of the tab more congested, which will push the label out towards the edge). I'd like to add a way to do this where the label doesn't move around in the future, but until then it's better not to have the functionality IMO.

There's a couple of things I'm hoping to address, such as the background colour in input fields (see earlier posts above). And I've noted a few more points on the "Theme challenges and ideas" wiki page (github.com/buymeasoda/soda-them ... -and-ideas) that came up during the process of building the theme.

buymeasoda, could you make Soda Dark be just a little tiny bit darker? (particularly the panes look whitish, they're a bit washed out.) Maybe just match the tone and contrast of the status bar a bit... and perhaps the background behind the tabs, it could match the tone of the sidebar, what do you think?

If people don't mind, for those having any issues, can you post the basics of your operating environment? So I can understand if certain problems or differences are only occurring with certain OS setups. For example, one of the developers at my work has text rendering with a black background in the goto anything results text on Ubuntu, but in other setups it is fine.

If you can, please include: Operating System and OS Version. So far, the theme design and development process has been done on machines running Mac OS X Lion and Snow Leopard.

And screenshots are really welcomed if the issue is tricky to describe.

Wow, this is fantastic. The light theme is just what I've been looking for. The default theme looks fine on my Mac, but I would prefer a light theme. Also, I think the crappy old monitor I use with Windows at work is responsible for the fact that I can barely see the tab outlines or the scroll bar indicators at all there. I'm looking forward to trying this out on that machine. Thanks for this!